Rachel
When I returned from the library, it was clear that the day hadn’t gone all that well for Claire and Charlie. Charlie was sulking in the living room when I got home, his face buried in a book, a fire dying out in the fireplace. When I asked where Claire was, he pointed upstairs and up I went. It had felt good to be out and about for the day, so returning to such a forlorn quiet made me feel already nostalgic for the day’s ease.
I found Claire in front of her laptop, highlighting passages from her Cauvery River notes. She looked determined but a little hazy, and I wondered if she had had another seizure or if the day had just been exhausting for other reasons.
She looked up at me and smiled. “Charlie is angry with me again. I did something stupid and now he won’t let it go.”
“He’ll be fine in another hour or so, after some wine and brooding,” I said. “What happened?
“Oh, the usual,” Claire answered. “I didn’t stay put.” She laughed, but I could tell she was angry too. She clicked the laptop shut and wrapped a shawl tightly around her shoulders. “Have you met Charlie’s coworkers yet?” she asked. “Henry? Emile? Sophie?”
I hadn’t been to Charlie’s office in over ten years. I had no idea who these people were. I was impressed, though, that Claire had remembered all their names. “Not a one,” I answered.
“I met them all today,” Claire said. “Or remet them, I guess. I brought a cheat sheet with me in case I forgot their names, but I got every one of them right except for Sophie. I’m not sure I’ve met Sophie before.”
“How was the office?” I asked.
“Fine until I got bored. It looked so nice outside, I decided to take a walk and sit in a café. Charlie was rather displeased by my decisions.”
“Ah, I see,” I answered. I was sure there was more to the story than Claire was telling me, but I knew how hard it must be for her to have all these rules and restrictions limiting her every movement.
“Would you do me a favor, Rach? Do you mind spending a couple of hours with me tomorrow if you don’t have too much work to do?”
I still wasn’t used to this new side of Claire. The uncertain, hesitant, slightly needy version of my best friend, who I had always known as the one who took charge and made decisions and rescued everybody else. “Of course! I can take the day off. What did you want to do?” My voice, too, had started to surprise me when I was with Claire. Too chipper. Too patronizing, even. Charlie, perhaps, was rubbing off on me.
“I want to go shopping for some new clothes. I was so embarrassed showing up at Charlie’s office today. I mean, I’m basically wearing his clothes because I’m too skeletal to fit into any of my old stuff. And then I had to run into Sophie, who was this lovely creature with everything she wore just so. Next to her, I looked like a hobbit or some kind of shut-in. Even if I never leave the house, it will feel good to look like a sane person.”
I laughed. “You look nothing like a hobbit, but sure, let’s go shopping. I could use some new clothes too.”
It had been almost a month since Claire and Charlie had picked me up at the Burlington airport, and more than two since I’d left them in Florida. Before I arrived, Claire insisted that she was desperate for company other than Charlie, and she joked that she needed a chauffeur too. Charlie also phoned to explain that Claire needed to be seizure-free for three months before she’d be allowed to drive a car again, and according to his updates, her seizures were still erupting every few days. The doctors were mystified by these little “breakthroughs,” as they called them, and Charlie was terrified that she might have one of her “spells” (Charlie’s word for it) while he was at work. I’m not sure if Claire knew about those late-night calls I received from Charlie, if she realized the image of her that had taken shape in my mind—bruised and cloudy, blurry in her gaze and unsteady on her feet. If I were to believe Charlie, she had become a walking accident, clumsy and shaky and out of focus.
It was selfish of me, but at first I didn’t want to come. I had finally got myself back into some semblance of a routine. My plants had only just begun to forgive me for their yellowed leaves and drooping stems. I had been feeling tired from lack of sleep for days, and my back was aching from too many late hours cramming edits onto a glowing computer screen. When I looked in the mirror, I saw that shadows had crept under my eyes, and my skin seemed dusty—the effects of that unplanned-for Florida sun. All of these were, of course, merely excuses. Mostly I was afraid—afraid of what I’d find in Claire, afraid that what Charlie had said was true. I was also afraid of the three of us navigating this new territory where Claire had suddenly become the vulnerable one. I’d grown used to protecting Charlie from Claire, but I was worried that Claire might be the one needing protection these days. I knew that Charlie had been angry for a long time. I could imagine his need for revenge, or his longing for a sort of punishment at least, even if he wasn’t conscious of it himself. I’ve felt it too, over the years, a need for revenge, against Claire or perhaps both of them, which was another reason I was frightened to come.
But despite it all, there was a part of me that was hopeful that whatever had gone on inside Claire’s brain was providing an opening, a clearing away of old clutter, a chance to answer some old and aching questions. After I hung up the phone with Claire those weeks ago, I thought about Charlie standing by the window at that Key West hospital with Claire beeping a few feet away, and how he had leaned into my body and wrapped his long, skinny arms around me. It had been a long time since we’d been so close. There was a comfort in feeling his weight again, even in the midst of all that worry and uncertainty. As I said, maybe I was being selfish.
When Charlie and Claire picked me up at the local airport, Claire would have run into my arms if Charlie hadn’t restrained her. She pushed and pulled out of his grasp until he let go in exasperation. “Careful, Claire,” he urged as she caught me up in one of her enormous hugs.
“You smell delicious!” Claire grabbed me by the hand and led me away from Charlie. “Did you check bags? Tell Charlie what to look for and then he can meet us outside. I want to have you all to myself for the first few minutes at least.”
The force of Claire’s energy surprised me initially. If it hadn’t been for Charlie’s words of warning over the phone, this is just what I would have expected from Claire—the bear hug and the demand for undivided attention. But under the surface of things, I could see that Claire seemed unsure of herself. Despite the largeness of her gestures, she kept looking to Charlie for his okay.
“My suitcase is green and duffel-shaped. It’s got a little piece of yellow yarn attached to the handle.” I smiled at Charlie. “We’ll meet you outside.”
“All right, then, I’ll go fetch the bag, but at least give me a hug first, Rach.” Charlie pressed me into a careful hug and whispered into my hair. “Keep a close eye on her. When she gets too excited, she can totally lose it, and then the next thing you know, she’ll be on the ground.”
Before I could respond, Claire was tugging on my arm. “Leave her be, Charlie.” With Charlie searching out my eyes and Claire locking her elbow in mine, I began to wonder if this was what the next weeks were going to be like, this push and pull of competing loyalties.
It was Charlie who released me first and made his way toward baggage claim. “We’ll see if he brings back the right bag,” Claire called out after him. “He gets his greens mixed up with his reds,” she added more quietly.
Now this was unlike Claire. Sure, she could push and poke and tease—we all expect that of her—but it was rarer for her to be so clumsy with her teasing. If Charlie had heard, his swift gait didn’t show it. I must have looked confused, because Claire felt the need to explain. “Charlie is color blind. That’s what I was giving him a hard time about.”
“Claire,” I said, “I know Charlie’s color blind. I’ve known him even longer than you have, remember?” And before the words were out of my mouth, I realized that I had come here in part to test her in so
me way, to search out her willingness to return to the past, to find out what we might be allowed to say to one another now.
But all Claire said was, “Of course you did,” and there was nothing in her expression that registered more than this fact.
Yes, I wanted to say. Of course I did. And I met his parents before you did. And I knew that he got motion sickness before you did. And I slept with him before you did too. Instead we sat down on a bench next to the taxi stand, feeling the cold breath of late autumn as we waited for Charlie.
“I’m so glad to see you, Rach.” Claire rested her head on my shoulder and I watched her breath puff out in little bursts of mist. She smelled different to me, piney, with traces of woodsmoke. Over the years, Claire had developed an appreciation for exotic scents; you could smell her as soon as she entered a room, sandalwood or bergamot or jasmine drifting in ahead of her. Now she smelled a whole lot like Charlie.
Charlie had always smelled clean to me. He packs satchels of lavender in his suitcases—he is the first and only man I have ever known who does this—and his closets are lined with cedar blocks. There were times in the past when I tried to smell his skin, to get a little closer to the human presence in him, the vulnerable, sweaty earthiness that we all must carry around with us, but Charlie never seemed to have that. I had been doing a lot of this kind of thinking lately, imagining and remembering a Charlie apart from Claire, my first impressions of him, how much I trusted the solid consistency of him before I had learned to doubt him.
Claire kissed the bottom of my jaw quickly as she raised her head and smiled. It was an awkward gesture.
“It’s really good to see you too,” I whispered back, not certain if I was quite telling her the truth. What did Claire look like to me? I searched for traces of my best friend framed between her oversize woolen hat and the scarf wound round her neck. Her eyes looked tired and they couldn’t seem to settle on anything for more than a few seconds. She had hardly kept eye contact with me since our initial hug. She didn’t seem to want to be looked at.
Claire talked to the wall behind me. “I think I might be going a little crazy, Rach. It’s like I’ve become Charlie’s clumsy shadow, following him wherever he goes, being still when he chooses to be still, walking when he feels like some fresh air. Sometimes I catch myself asking him permission to go to the bathroom. We’ve really become quite ridiculous.” Claire lifted her head and smiled in the direction of the taxis. “I don’t blame either of us, really, for this stupidity. We have no idea what to do with me.”
Even in a weakened state, Claire could still pull me to her. The force of her will, the texture of her familiar voice—I could feel Claire tugging me into her orbit. I wanted to help her; I wanted to help Charlie too, just as they had helped me all those years ago. And I was starting to understand that I enjoyed how much they both seemed to need me. I was being made important again, just as I had been when I opened up my home to them and arranged family dinners and built bookshelves for all of us and gave us a place to celebrate the holidays. Our self-made orphanage. Of course I wanted Claire to get strong again and I wanted Charlie to have his life back, but selfishly I also wanted to go back to whatever moment it was when we all still loved each other equally and hadn’t started lying yet. “What should we do with you, Claire? What do you want to do this week? I’m all yours.”
Claire turned her focus back to me and smiled. “Well, I want to walk alongside Lake Champlain. The whole bike path. I’ve been working on my endurance. I think we can do it.” Claire took out a notebook and started making a list. “If I don’t write all this down, I’ll forget it by the time we get home.”
“Charlie told me about the notebooks. They seem like a good idea.”
“They were Charlie’s idea. I’m not sure if they’re really working, but they help cut away some of the boredom at least. I want to go to the grocery store too and fill the cart with my choices, my cereal, my fruit, my brand of coffee . . . whatever those might be. I have the hardest time deciding what I like.”
As Claire continued her list, Charlie rounded the corner, rolling my suitcase behind him. He waved once and I waved back.
“Charlie got the right bag after all,” I whispered to Claire, but she was busy with her writing and didn’t seem to hear me or notice Charlie’s return, so Charlie and I watched her in silence, exchanging amused smiles over her head as we waited for her to finish. Perhaps I was already choosing sides.
This morning, Charlie and I had breakfast at the kitchen counter as he got ready for work and I waited for Claire to wake up, a routine we had fallen into during the weeks I had been there. Charlie spread some butter on a slice of toast and handed it to me. “She’s been getting tired more quickly lately, don’t you think?” he asked between sips of tea.
As he drooped his long frame against the counter, he pressed his shoulder against mine. He was doing it again, placing his body next to me in ways he hadn’t done for years now. Once he had chosen Claire and the two of them moved into the same room, he was careful around me. He made sure that he and I were never in the same place alone for any length of time. He became even more polite, asking me permission to use things in the house, though up until then, I had made it clear that everything we had was shared. All this propriety, all these evasions, were the only acknowledgments that anything had ever passed between us. I used to try to touch him, just to be certain that he would pull away and it wasn’t just my imagination. I liked his discomfort; it was the only source of power I still had over him.
“You know, Charlie, you speak about her like she’s a toddler. She must hate it when you do that.” I hadn’t meant to scold him, but I could imagine Claire’s outrage if she had heard herself discussed like this.
“You’re right. It’s a horrible habit. It’s just that I’ve been put in charge of everything—organizing her medications, making her doctor’s appointments, urging her toward naps, reminding her to take the clothes out of the dryer. And she relies on me to do all of this. It’s not like I want to parent her, for God’s sake, but then she does something idiotic like she did yesterday, and I want to lock her up in her room like a child.”
“I didn’t mean to say that you’re enjoying any of this, Charlie. I’m sorry I said anything.”
“Oh, Rachel, please. You can say whatever you like. And you’re absolutely right, of course. I nag her and she resents me. Perhaps we’re being punished for never having any children.” Charlie attempted a smile, but it traveled over his face more like a grimace.
I’m sure I must have frowned too, because Charlie kissed me quickly on the forehead. “You’re good to take her shopping, Rachel. Don’t let any of my whining bother you. I’m just exhausted and grumpy and I don’t like to have to think about the way I’ve been behaving lately.”
Charlie had always been so proper and polite, and easily the most graceful person I know at changing the subject. But lately he’d been nervous and fluttering and offering dry kisses. He was a mess. “I thought we might go down to Church Street and wander around the stores there for a bit.”
“That sounds perfect.” Charlie took one last sip of his tea. “Just be careful on the cobblestones down there and try to have her home by three so she can rest up before dinner.”
I raised my eyebrows at him and shook my head. “You’re unbelievable. You’re forgetting that I’ve been here for over three weeks.”
“You’re right! I am! I am! It’s shameful, isn’t it? All right, then I’m off. Ignore me and have a fantastic day. I’ll see you both for supper.”
Even though Charlie was occasionally driving me nuts, I was sad to see him go. I could still feel his kiss on my forehead as I listened to his car pull away. I realized that this had become our new rhythm. When Claire was tucked away for her naps or her long sleep into the morning, Charlie and I would have our moments in the kitchen, on the couch, where he would reveal things to me. I suppose it was up to me to reveal things too, including the lingering questions and not quite
forgotten anger. There have always been those questions I could never ask him, such as, how easy had it been for him to leave me behind? Did he ever think about the hurt he caused when he chose my best friend over me? These questions are unfair, especially now. I kept far too many things from him too. I imagine that to Charlie we have always been only friends, good friends, of course, who had slept together, but nothing more. And I never contradicted him. So how could he have known?
I have been in this house so infrequently over the years but watched as Claire’s presence diminished over time, until she seemed to exist only in the frames of old photographs. She was overseas on assignment so frequently that more and more of her things must have been packed away or stored in her New York apartment. On the rare occasion when we were all here together, Claire often forgot where things were kept—the bottle opener, her raincoat, her photo albums. Perhaps Charlie had rearranged things while she traveled, or perhaps her mind was someplace else. There was not much more evidence of her being here even now. It was easy to forget that she was upstairs, sleeping in the master bedroom, surrounded by Charlie’s things.
Claire took her time getting ready, but we managed to get into the rental car by eleven. It was a cold day, but bright, and the leafless trees looked apologetic in the late-morning light. Claire was wearing one of my sweaters, a speckled orange bundle of wool, shapeless over her leggings. And on her feet, she wore some clunky Wellies. I laughed at her as she approached the car.
“What’s so funny?” She looked suddenly uncertain and I felt bad about making her question herself at all.
“It’s just that you look like such a Vermonter! And it’s not even that cold outside.”
She laughed and I knew right away that everything was all right again. “I know! It’s awful, isn’t it? I never feel warm here.” She climbed into the car and I followed, taking my place at the wheel. As I started the engine, she turned to me and punched me in the shoulder. “I’m so excited for a clothing overhaul. I want some skirts and some pretty blouses, and some new shoes. That’ll be a good start.”
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